To lose and protect
by HopingForNothing
Summary: Mikan is left at an orphanage and it is only her early and unexpected friendship with Nobara that results in her being recognised to possess the ice alice instead. Having to hide her real alices even as she struggles to protect her precious loved ones, it only gets harder for her. NatsumeXMikan and Mikan has the ICES alice.


_Spoiler alert: Mika has the ICES alice (it's one of those fics) but she's also pretty smart and she would use her alice in some (pretty, if I would say so myself) intelligent ways and she would have a minor complex about her precious people because it's just that easy to lose people in life. _

Disclaimer: I don't own anything, except this fanfic.

A/n: Yo, so this fanfiction was just something really random that I thought up and decided to write about and honestly I don't even know how long I will continue this story (I only have the next chapter sort of done) and I didn't beta-read or check so there might be some errors here and there. But I figured I could write this story just to share it with everyone. Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did writing it.

* * *

_For most of her life before her 3rd birthday, Mikan couldn't remember staying in a city for longer than a week. She couldn't really understand what was happening, but even with her intelligence limited by her age, she knew that her mommy and she were being chased. _

_But by who? Or by what? Mikan didn't know. _

_And so Mikan was ecstatic when on the day she turned 3, her mommy took her to a playground. She had giggled in joy as she ran up and down the slides, spun on merry-go-rounds, and felt wind whistle in her ears as her mommy pushed her on the swing. For a brief moment, Mikan was the happiest child alive and she forgot about the bad people chasing after her mommy and her. _

_That was until 12 midnight on that fateful day when her mommy knelt down and looked her in the eyes. There was nary an expression on her face as she gently cupped Mikan's face in her larger hands. _

_"Mikan, sweetie, this is goodbye." _

_"Goodbye? Mommy, I don't understand. Why are we here, we should run." Her voice came out more of a high-pitched whine in her uneasiness and it was with great difficulty that she managed to string sentences together with her limited vocabulary. _

_"Mikan… you can't follow mommy anymore. It's too dangerous." _

_"I don't wanna! I want to be with mommy!" Tears welled up in her eyes and it was only years of discipline, of not being able to cry out loud for fear of their pursuers catching up to them that stopped her from wailing at the last moment. _

_Her mommy was too crying now, but her expression was stern as she wiped Mikan's tears. _

_"I don't have the ability to protect you… At this rate, both of us will die." _

_"I don't care, I don't wanna leave mommy!" She knew she was acting spoilt but it scared her. _

_She didn't want to be abandoned by her only family. _

_However, her mommy was ignoring her stubbornness as her hands tightened ever so slightly around Mikan's face, forcing Mikan to focus on the situation at hand. _

_"Sweetie, I'm only going to say this once so listen very carefully. You have a few special powers in you and they're called alices. You have the ability to nullify or steal other people's alices and you also have the ability to teleport." _

_Mikan's face was agape. She knew she had the ability to teleport- she had done it once by accident and her mommy had turned pale and forbidden her from ever doing that again. But the other 2… alices? She hadn't known about it. _

_"Sweetie, focus! This is very important." Her mommy called her attention back as her mind started to drift into long forgotten memories. "You cannot under any circumstances, use your alices or tell anyone about them. Especially, steal. People will come after you and you'll be in danger, so promise me this at least!" _

_Her mommy wasn't giving her any chance to get out of the promise, so she could only nod her head. "Okay… I promise mommy." _

_Her mommy looked so relief at the moment, as she smiled through her tears and kissed Mikan gently on her forehead. "I love you." _

_That was the last thing Mikan heard before she felt a hard impact, and her vision was met with darkness._

* * *

_When Mikan next woke up, she found herself in an unfamiliar bed in a place called 'orphanage'. She quickly learned that this was the place children with no parents lived in, and it wasn't hard with her intelligence to understand that her mommy was gone. It hurt, so badly, but she revelled in the calmness of the understanding that even if she had been abandoned, it had been out of love and for her safety. _

_Mikan soon got used to life at the orphanage, but she struggled to make friends with the other children who were just so pure and innocent and just something that she could never be. Maybe the other kids sensed her awkwardness, but they interacted with her less and less and overtime, she faded into obscurity. _

_But it worked in her favour as that meant she had more time to herself while secretly trying out the alices her mommy had told her about. Even though she knew it was dangerous, she was like a moth to the flame. It fascinated her to no end that there existed some kind of unknown power within her, and the more she searched for it within her body, the more she understood the uses of her powers. It was as if she had been born with knowledge, and it had only gotten clearer when she realised her own powers. _

_Sadly, Mikan's alices were either impossible to test on anyone simply because there was no one with alice around her to see any kind of result, or they were too showy which went against the promise she had made to her mommy. And so, Mikan only dared to teleport a few centimetres at most, and only behind locked doors like when she was in the bathroom. _

_It was in this pattern that Mikan's days continued until a blue-haired girl was dropped off at the orphanage. She had been strangely silent, almost as if something had happened recently that had sent her in shock. _

_A strange feeling had taken over Mikan when she saw that girl, but it prompted her to initiate contact with her, something that she had never done before. _

_"Hello, my name is Azumi Mikan, what's yours?" _

_The girl turned to look at her almost sluggishly, before answering in a small whisper. "Ibaragi… Nobara." _

_Their conversation had faded into awkwardness at that point since Nobara wasn't in the mood for conversation and Mikan had practically 0 experience interacting with kids her age. _

_"Nobara-chan, will you be my first friend? I don't actually have any friends in the orphanage and you look really nice!" Mikan had decided to take a page out of the other children's book, and adopted what she called the 'childishly-stupid-conversation'. Who knows, maybe this was alice that everyone had that she had yet to learn how to access, but it apparently worked when Nobara returned her a small smile. _

_"Yes… thank you, Mikan...chan."_

_It was only a few weeks later and Nobara and Mikan were on the fast track to being good friends, that Mikan finally had an inkling as to why she had been so compelled to befriend Nobara when she had outright ignored all the other kids. _

_And it had come in the form of a confession._

_"Mikan-chan… there's something I have to tell you." _

_"Hmm, what's it? You know you can tell me anything!" _

_"I… I have some kind of power. I don't know what it was but I made everyone turn into ice." _

_Mikan knew she had a dumbstruck expression on her face, but she wasn't able to school her emotions as well she usually could. Nobara-chan has an alice? Was that why she felt a sense of kinship with her when they first met? _

_Mikan was so distracted with her thoughts she had missed the way Nobara's expression had rapidly darkened until the latter moved to stand up. Stretching out her hand, Mikan immediately grabbed her and dragged her back to her spot on the ground. _

_"I don't care if you have some strange powers or if you're some secret ice princess, Nobara-chan. You're my best and only friend and that's all that matters." _

_Nobara stared at her in shock, not having expected her to take the news so well, and grinned waterily at Mikan. _

_"But more importantly, tell me why you think you have an ice ability?" Mikan's expression was so serious as she stared at Nobara, which honestly frightened her quite a bit, but Nobara knew she could trust her and so she forced herself to relax. _

_"It was… when I was 6 years old. Mommy and Daddy were fighting and I was so scared, and I just wanted them to stop… and then I felt this… power. I knew that if I used it, then everything would stop. So I pushed it out… and suddenly Mommy and Daddy were frozen." _

_Mikan felt her heart lurch for her good friend as she wrapped her arms tightly around her. "Nobara-chan…" _

_"I was so scared… They wouldn't answer no matter how much I cried or screamed and I didn't know what to do. Then they finally melted but both Mommy and Daddy weren't breathing anymore and I didn't know what to do."_

_Nobara wasn't hearing her anymore as she shrunk in on herself, her hands clasped tightly around her ears almost as if she was trying to physically block the image out of her mind. It tore at Mikan's heart to see her friend like that and she just didn't know what she could do other than to continue hugging the older girl. _

_"I just… I wish I never had that power." _

_It was at her words that Mikan had a flash of inspiration, but she quickly bit her lip to stop herself from saying anything. She trusted Nobara, really she did! But she had promised her mommy that she would keep her alices a secret, and she never broke her promises. _

_However, that didn't mean she couldn't go about it in a sneakier fashion. _

_"Nobara-chan… I have an idea. I know of a way to make your power disappear forever, but that is only if you want that." _

_Nobara snapped out of her reverie almost instantly and threw herself at Mikan, her eyes wild with a fanatic light as she gripped Mikan's smaller hands into her own. "Is that true? Mikan, are you really telling the truth?" _

_Mikan didn't reply as she calmly observed her older friend before she nodded. _

_"Please tell me. Mikan, I beg you! I just want this power gone." The raw desperation in her voice that should never have been heard in any other 8-year-old removed any last of Mikan's remaining doubt. _

_"Nobara-chan, first get off me." _

_Nobara flushed as she realised she was practically lying on the younger girl, and she scrambled into a seiza, looking every bit alert and ready for the next instruction. Mikan had to resist a chuckle as she gestured for Nobara to get comfortable. _

_As they sat cross-legged facing each other and their hands intertwined, Mikan instructed Nobara to close her eyes. "I want you to reach deep inside and find that power, and then imagine yourself taking that power and condensing it and forcing it out of your body."_

_Honestly, Mikan knew she was stirring some cock and bull story and she strongly doubted that Nobara would listen to her, and yet the latter hadn't even batted an eyelid as she dutifully followed her instructions. Mikan felt so immensely guilty for lying to her simple and honest friend, and honestly, she wasn't sure if she was going to succeed since she had never used her alice before, and so she could only hope that her practices with her teleportation alice would translate to some degree of familiarity with her steal alice. _

_Mikan observed Nobara for a second longer before she too closed her eyes and extended her senses to cover Nobara. It was more of an instinct thing, but she quickly sensed the ice alice within Nobara, which wasn't all too difficult considering the sheer strength and immensity of her alice. With a hesitant tug, Mikan felt the ice alice in Nobara shift and the jerk that ran through her hands told Mikan that Nobara was aware of it too. _

_Focusing harder, Mikan imagined two imaginary hands that wrapped around the ice alice and she squeezed and moulded into until it started to look like a stone. Gently, Mikan guided the alice through Nobara's body and out of her fingertips, until a small blue stone formed between their intertwined hands. _

_Nobara stared in undisguised shock at the blue stone, and she slowly turned it around in her hands. "Mikan… this… how?" _

_Mikan simply smiled suspiciously before she shrugged. "I don't know, Nobara-chan. But I think it's cause you really wanted it gone, and that's why this happened!" _

_Nobara stared suspiciously at her best friend before she burst into giggles and embraced her in a tight hug. "Whatever, I don't care but thank you, Mikan-chan! I'm so happy that the power is finally gone." _

_Mikan smiled as she raised a hand to pat Nobara's back soothingly. "I really don't know what you're talking about. I'm just a normal girl with no powers, and if anyone asks, you should probably say that you never had this power in the first place." _

_Nobara stiffened in her arms before she slowly pried herself away from Mikan. "I… I don't know how my parents died. The police told me that they froze to death, but I had been in my room and I wasn't aware. I don't know anything about any strange power." _

_Nobara's face was expressionless as she uttered the unsaid promise, and Mikan understood as she pulled her back into a hug. _

_When they finally separated, Nobara stared long and hard at the stone in her hands before pressing it into Mikan's. _

_"Nobara-chan?" _

_"I'm giving you the stone, I… I don't want to ever remember about that power ever again and I hope… maybe one day this stone can be useful to you." _

_Mikan's eyes softened in understanding and she gratefully pocketed it. "I will treasure your gift, Nobara-chan. I promise." _

_And that was a promise Mikan would continue to hold onto, even as Nobara was visited by a strange masked man a few weeks later, who probed about her abilities and eventually took Nobara away without giving her a chance to say her goodbyes. _

_Mikan never saw her again._


End file.
